Re: Magazine owns my voluntarily contributed article?

On Tue, 21 Jun 2005, Dodi Schultz wrote:

> You shouldn't have done that. A publication has every right to assume (as
> Frederick Emrich suggested in his reply) that it is being offered exclusive
> first rights in the material, at least in its distribution area, unless
> you've stated otherwise in an accompanying letter.

I would expect a company in the business of publishing periodicals to have a basic understanding of copyright law, including the fact that it does not ever acquire exclusive rights of any kind, absent a signed writing from the author conveying those rights.

In short, the publication has *no* right to assume it has acquired exclusive rights. It may assume it was *offered* exclusive (or non-exclusive) rights, but until that offer hardens into a real deal, they're out of line to assert exclusivity, and in most cases (with exceptions for letters to the editor and similar works), to publish in the first place.

> That wasn't courteous or professional of them (although your submission
> certainly implied that you wished the magazine to publish it). There should
> have been a communication to you proposing terms, if not actually offering
> a fee.

There should have been more than a communication offering terms; there should have been an actual deal with acceptance by both sides of those terms. Received on Wed Jun 22 2005 - 02:10:01 GMT